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Comment by biot | Hacker News Reader

First prize is $25,000 USD. Doesn't seem worth it given that it appears one must upload their code, eg: https://github.com/amazon-picking-challenge

In comparison, Netflix gave away $1,000,000 for a better recommendation algorithm.

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It seems worth it if you want 25000$ and are willing to do this work for it, no?

I think what was meant was that a winning solution to Amazon's problem is probably worth a lot more to them than $25000 to them. Eg. cents saved picking item would rack up to millions saved annually. Amazon bought Kiva for $775 million.[1] a top rank robotic picking and packing solution would be worth as much too.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-03-19/amazon-acq...

Amazon won't be using any of this technology. Heck, nobody will be using this technology. This is just an opportunity to encourage people to get together and further research.

If you're capable of creating something that can win first place, and you do the work, then the result is worth far more than $25,000; so if you want $25,000 and are willing to do this work, then appropriate reaction would be to do that outside of the competition and sell it for much, much more than that.

You don't want to sell your IP to one competitor, what you really want to do is freely license it and then go consult for everyone in the market. Michael Hanack got extremely wealthy on that with his phthalocyanine semiconductors.

I think the total potential winnings could be $50,000 because it's $25k top event prize for "each task". The 2 tasks I see are: "stow task" and "pick task".

But to your point, $50k doesn't have quite the same glamour as $1 million.

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